It's notoriously difficult to make travel ads that don't look like every other travel ad ever. Green mountains, crystal clear streams, maybe a time-lapse shot of clouds moving behind mountainsand then cut to an outdoor restaurant patio where an ethnically diverse and indeterminately aged group of casually dressed professionals delightfully dine over plates of presumably local cuisine. Most ads, in other words, look exactly like every spot from the Pure Michigan campaign.

There's nothing more obnoxious than irony that tries to be funny and falls short (right Spirit Airlines?). So it's kind of refreshing to see this ad from Explore Minnesota, which takes the opposite approach...

The first two minutes of this commercial, featuring the notoriously surly Russell Crowe being entertainingly surly, are a fun jaunt through Sydney. There's a panoramic of the harbor, a trip to a bar, and a bit of self-deprecation regarding one of the star's more notorious temper flareups. It actually kind of makes us want to go to Australia.

At about 2:05 of this tourism ad, however, things take a turn. Without getting into too many details: there's a tongue that jumps out of Crowe's body, starts hopping away, and then gets pecked by a bird. After that Crowe more or less threatens listeners with physical harm if you don't start planning their trip to Oz right away. None of which particularly makes us want to go to Australia.

In a repeat of what happened with the Big Ash tourism debacle, the story about the Gulf oil spill is slowly moving from the objective environmental problem to the political nonsense surrounding it. Some states are trying to overplay the disaster to get more compensation from BP. Other states are working to underplay the spill because they don't want to scare away tourists. And now we've got the New Orleans tourism board taking BP's money and using it to print snide anti-British tourism ads. Classy!

The print ad in question, which was obviously and immediately pulled once sensible people saw it, played on the devastating defeat that Andrew Jackson handed to an invading British army during the 1814-1815 Battle of New Orleans. The ad's background has a tilted statue of Jackson and then in the foreground, written up in some kind of weird Alice in Wonderland-esque font, the text: "This isn't the first time New Orleans has survived the British."

England's tourism board VisitEngland has been a whirlwind of activity lately and this month they're up to something a little bit different, taking advantage of the tourism buzz generated by Ridley Scott's Robin Hood.

We've already told you about how the movie is generating a spike in interest around Sherwood Forest. VisitEngland's new campaign, centered around their new "Myths and Legends" site, wants to expand that interest to all of England. They've created an interactive map that divides the country into dozens of regions and describes the fairy tales, myths, and stories based out of those areas.

We keep meaning to post this winter-themed ad from Switzerland's MySwitzerland tourism board, but pesky things like airline mishaps, terrorist attacks, and the US governments' overreactions to each were getting in the way. Luckily our planet is currently in the midst of a mind-numbing cold spell, so this the video is still eminently topical.

There are lots of neat things going on in the ad, from the straightforward emphasis on the destinationsomething that you'd think would be universal in travel advertising but isn'tto the "Get Natural" tagline at the very end. The motto builds on the rest of the video, which pokes a bit of fun at tourists who expect alpine lodges to have this mysterious aura of rustic authenticity.

Readers who appreciate the finer nuances of visual advertising will want to keep their eyes open for the gratuitous cleavage shot at the beginning. Watch it after the jump!